Laundering textiles is a necessity in order to remove stains, odors and soils. However, during the laundering process, textiles can undergo mechanical and chemical damage which can result in fabric wrinkles, color fading, dye transfer, pills/fuzz, fabric wear, fiber deterioration, stiffness, and other undesirable consumer issues. Therefore, many laundry products such as detergents, fabric conditioners, and other wash, rinse, and dryer added products, frequently include one or more fabric care benefit agents that are added in an attempt to reduce or prevent these consumer issues.
However, such fabric care benefit agents often provide limited benefits due to poor delivery efficiency on the fabrics or textiles during the laundering process. The affinity between these fabric care agents and fabrics/garments is typically very limited due to the lack of natural attractive forces between the fabric care agents and the fabrics. This is because most fabric care agents used in laundry products are formulated to be anionic or nonionic in order to avoid interaction with anionic surfactants which might lead to potential cleaning negatives. Since most textile fibers such as cotton, wool, silk, nylon, and the like carry a slightly anionic charge in the laundry solution, there are repulsive instead of attractive forces between the fabric care agent and the fabric resulting in poor delivery efficiency.
This is particularly true of water insoluble fabric care benefit agents, examples of which include but are not limited to, dispersible polyolefins, polymer latexes and the like. Due to their water insolubility, water insoluble fabric care benefit agents are generally incorporated into laundry product formulations in some type of water stable form such as an emulsion, a latex, a dispersion, a suspension, or the like. When added to the laundry product in a water stable form, the water insoluble fabric care benefit agent becomes even more stable in solution. This is due to the existence of large amounts of surfactant that are present in laundry products. The surfactant in the laundry products tends to act as an emulsifying agent, dispersion agent, suspension agent, or the like thereby resulting in the further stabilization of the emulsion, dispersion, and/or suspension containing the water insoluble fabric care benefit agent. As a result of this stabilization, the affinity of the water insoluble fabric care benefit agent for the fabric is severely limited. The majority of the water insoluble fabric care benefit agent tends to stay in solution wherein it is discarded with the wash solution thereby limiting the amount of benefit agent available for deposition on the fabric.
Accordingly, there is a need to improve the fabric delivery efficiency of water insoluble fabric care benefit agents that are incorporated into laundry products.